Page 502 - Popular Magic

Author Notes:

Stepping outside and realizing your outfit wasn't nearly as clever as you thought it was... Yeah, that happened to me quite a bit.

I ran into some technical difficulties with Fallout is Dragons Session 25. Not lost-the-whole-recording difficult, but lost-many-hours-of-work-and-can't-even-right-now difficult. This one's gonna be late, sorry.

58 Comments:

One time in Pathfinder, the party was doing... less than well against a trio of ogrekin with class levels, and eventually fled the battle. (I think they were convinced that the shapeshifter ranger was actually a werebear.)

However, one member of the group had been knocked unconscious during the fight. More importantly, said character was the party's healstick. (Also, Pathfinder ogres. For those unfamiliar with the setting, let's just say that you wouldn't want to leave your worst enemy to their mercy. Well, I wouldn't...)

Cue the bard, who made use of his quick change cloak, a magic item that let him prepare and store three different mundane disguises ahead of time. He donned a military uniform, cued up a ghost sound of people marching behind him, walked up to the inbred hicks, and told them they had a special attache to the Copperport Self-Defense Force.

One contested Bluff roll, and one of the ogres says, "Aw shit, Zug, what've you gone and dragged us in now?"

There was one costumed caper that went extremely well for the most part then in a single sentence turned horrible.

Our group was trying to find an ancient relic that was key in stopping a cult from completing a ritual that would tear open a portal to Hell and unleash armies of demons into the world, the problem was that it happened to have been found by someone else and through a series of events made it's way into a royal treasury. Our only solution was to sneak in, take it and leave as quick as possible, naturally as the thief it fell on me to do so. After asking around the kingdom we discovered that the prince had been on a diplomatic visit to another Kingdom and was a couple days late in returning, seeing the opportunity I disguised myself as the Prince and bluffed my way into the castle even fooling the King and Queen into believing I was actually their son. As the "Prince" it was easy to get what we needed and even allow the rest of the party to raid the treasury getting a load of awesome gear. When the real prince actually turned up the King and Queen still thought I was the real one and had the actually Prince executed for impersonating royalty, it was at this point I realized I had to leave as soon as possible just in case I got a bad roll and was found out, luckily I made up that I was going back to the other Kingdom to finalize the treaty between the 2 and we ere able to flee the Kingdom armed with great gear and our Bag of Holding lined with several thousand more gold than we had before.

The only downside was that we had accidentally gotten the real Prince publicly executed by his own parents for being an imposter, whoops.

Well, given my apparent lack of ability to find a group that sticks together for longer than a few sessions, all I can provide is the one time I (very briefly) played a shapeshifter in a game where we were all custom classed as mecha pilots and I managed to connive my way into getting the class to let me play as Nanoha. Barrier Jackets, Starlight Breakers, and all.

At some point one of our players was yammering about how anything and everything "needs more 'stache" for reasons I can no longer remember, so I shapeshifted one. While keeping the rest of my (ten-year-old girl) appearance otherwise identical.

I kept that 'stache until the group inevitably dissolved, because I thought it was hilarious (in and out of character).

My story comes again from my goblin alchemist Ghlarg. He head sold his identity, mostly because he had wracked up obscene amounts of debt, and because he had a god after him, and because he was ashamed of being a coward.

Cut to several sessions later, where my newest character appeared: Captain Grenadier. The captain was allegedly a hobbit who always wore a mask. My group, of course, quickly figured out that this was Glargh in disguise, a la Sniper King.

So, cut to when the mask comes off to reveal.... a halfling named Captain Grenadier. I had succeeded one of my greatest cons without even rolling a bluff.

Of course, Captain Grenaider was later revealed to be Ghlarg with a disguise self spell cast on himself, but that's another story.

I have the feeling that Wednesday's game was suppose to have us disguise ourselves as cultist for what we were suppose to do but since we didn't do that, I guess I won't be sharing that story yet.

But I'd be a jerk if I didn't share something. So costumes! My spellthief (He looks like this) hailed from the part of the game world reminiscent of Dishonored (ironically, this was before Dishonored was even a thing so no ripoffs here) and was suck in the campaign's main land where medieval knights, fur clad barbarians, and the like ruled the broken and worn torn lands. Suffice to say that my master assassin stuck out like a sore thumb.

One encounter that highlighted this was when the group was traveling the countryside when we spotted a large mercenary group heading towards us. Since our mission was suppose to be a secret, we opted to split the group and go around them. I decided that, since I had just joined, I could distract them to keep them from noticing us (Since, you know, we're walking through a plain. Kinda hard to stay unnoticed with nothing to hide behind. I did point this out, by the way, and was ignored) by pretending to be a mercenary myself and having a little bit of a conversation with them. I barely pulled off being a mercenary if only because I looked so ridiculous in their eyes that the only explanation was that I had some kind of theme or something. I also failed at keeping their attention as the only guy to not laugh at my silly costume (and thus was the only one looking around) also managed to roll a natural 20 on his spot check and our plan died horribly. Thankfully we didn't but I never tried to do anything like that ever again if only to try and spare whatever was left of my character's dignity at that point.

Raxon walks right up to an enemy stronghold in his early years, wearing a black cowboy had, a fake moustache, and a white shirt with the words "BAD GUY" written on it.

The doorman laughs and thinks Raxon is the entertainment for the big bad's son's birthday party. Raxon goes in, entertains them with his foolishness and some magic tricks, gets paid, and leaves. Ten minutes later, he meets his comrades.

I've been playing in a Bleach based campaign for awhile, and one of our big bads once was Rasputin, resurrecting warriors and such from the past as super powered foes.

One of these foes was Hitler.

After his defeat at my friend Mike's hands, Mike decided he had a plan. He wanted to skin Hitler's body and make a 'Hitler Suit' to wear as a disguise in order to infiltrate the enemy. What briefly followed was a debate where everyone else pointed out the practical concerns with this plan(ie: It would never work) and the ethical ones. Mike countered he could TOTALLY make it work, and that it was Hitler.

The GM countered that the gates of hell open and take Hitler's corpse away, stripping him of the chance all together.

The party is in the low teens in level and sneaking through Cheliax to find out how to disrupt some massive diabolic ritual. Can't teleport anywhere, they have a magical detection system for that kind of thing over the whole country and anyone not registered gets an entire team of hellknights teleported in right next to them.

As it turns out, the small town were were passing through at the tie just so happens to have a patrol of Hellknights coming through on the same day. It's barren wasteland all around, so nowhere to hide out in the sticks. A few magical disguises let us at least get to the inn disguised as some minor nobility. Bad news, the Hellknights fell for it well enough that they decided to leave us with a couple of guards for our stay.

Well this won't do at all. Our sidemission in this town is causing a strix (human-hating bird-people) uprising to help cause a distraction for our main mission. Can't do that with private just-out-of-the-academy and his handler 'doing us the honor' of guarding us.

So my gnomish summoner, once we can be alone in our rooms for a few minutes, calls out his eidolon. Which is basically a cross between a squirrel and a wookie having a bad day, with a heavy scottish accent. Anyway, the bard pretending to be the noble asks for one of the guards to come in to assist her with something. Private whatshisface gets sent in and the door is closed. Invisible ninja squirrel then proceeds to bite the poor guy's head off in one attack roll. Then, I cast alter self on the eidolon to make him take the form of the of the guy and get into his armor. Some prestidigitation for the blood stains and we're good to go.

The 'noble', invisible gnome, and 'Hellknight' then come out and the noble proceeds to tell the other guard she wishes to conduct her business. So we drag that guy around town while the bard keeps the rest of the party updated on hellknght positions with a message spell I think. Eventually we manage to cause a riot from the villagers, mass escape of the strix slaves, a public execution of the mayor by our 'private', and all sorts of other chaos allowing us to escape after the strix so we could talk to their oracles to get the info we need.

I, with rest of party, were around town after a very abusive manor run. I was my butler Kobold Seb, and we were trying to sell a good portion of our loot. Our "boss", a kitsune ninja, wanted to find a rich idiot to sell some of our unwanted gear. Our DM rolled for difficulty to find... and a Nat 1 resulted in the town being full of them.

So, our "boss", and my master (a neutral good cleric), went up to a nobleman and his bodyguard to sell off a perfect sling (worth 400 gold). I was there too, but mostly in aw of the bodyguard, and I impulsively started to shine his armor (he didn't notice).

We ended up selling the sling for 600 because his bodyguard had been fighting barehanded for the last 10 years under his lord's service, and a heavy wooden shield for about 100. It would have been 60, but I had talked to the guard, and he mistook me for a small human child (apparently peasant clothing is the norm for children, and long snouts).

I took the mistake with pride and strung a story of, if I and my caretakers (ninja and cleric) don't get enough for selling our goods, then my master in the next town over would beat me (the ninja knew who my real master was, and was scared I might pin it on him if I messed up). So, after sobbing up to 100 gold, we sold him the shield and headed for our next mission.

I should seriously change hands before the cleric kicks my chaotic neutral rear to the curb.

I believe I already mentioned it, but one time The Great and Powerful Trixie dressed up as a Geico commercial mascot. XD Thus the 'talking unicorn' succeeded in getting past security at a prominent bank.

This was in Pathfinder and I was playing a bard/Barbarian Halfling who basically ran around as three different characters in the city. He mostly hung out at the bar as a Dwarf but when he needed to travel into the elite districts he disguised himself as the son of a noble, he was constantly making it clear that his parents were important but missing somehow and spent a small fortune keeping up credentials and occasionally having "relatives" come pick him up. And finally he was actually a halfling, a mid level member of the Theives Guild that mostly did information brokering since he could literally go where he wanted.

One time, I was playing in a Pathfinder game with a nautical setting in a world with no full-size continents whatsoever. This meant TONS of relatively-isolated islands or flotilla cities with interesting customs. One of the first islands we happened across was one in the middle of a huge festival. My sister, our DM, is trying to think of what the festival is FOR, and I suggest "the festival of silly hats." She runs with it, saying it's and elf thing in this area. My character is an elf and kind of eccentric, so he immediately embraces it (the fact that it was my idea out of game also had something to do with it), and basically tries to go full TF2 mode. By the end of the session, my character had a small tower of hats. There were even festival games where one had to wager their hat in order to play. Quite a fun session.

Back in the first Aspirations of Harmony campaign I was playing a guard who had been banished from the capital after saying a few unflattering things about the ruler. Later the party needed to get into a literal party to investigate the bad guy, but if I was spotted I'd be thrown out. I asked if our author party member had an idea, and one use of the Disguise skill later I was waltzing in as a pirate captain.

Well, in a pathfinder game, I had a gnome bard who hauled around all sorts of outfits for her satirical one-man plays. She had a noble outfit, a royal outfit, a workers outfit, ridiculous parodies all of course. But the one thing I forgot to pack? Cold weather clothes. And then our GM proceeded to frog-march us up and over the Crown of The World.

The party needed to infiltrate the Captain of the Guard's personal quarters in the castle to retrieve evidence that he was corrupt. Seeing as the king was holding a royal ball we figured that we should seduce him into bringing one of our party members to the ball, then we could sneak away or get invited to his quarters. Our elf ranger makes an attempt and we find out that he's horribly raciest. Our 12 year old cleric wanted to make an attempt but her Paladin protector wouldn't allow it.

Earlier in the campaign we came across a spring that changed any man that drank from it into a woman. Cue the party wizard spiking my Rogue's water-skin. After succeding in catching the captain's eye, the cleric and Ranger took my rogue to get 'prettied up' for the ball (hair, make-up, dress, shoes... the whole nine-yards).

While the Rogue was at the ball with the captain, the rest of the party stood by outside, in case anything went south. The Rogue was then invited back to the captain's quarters for some 'fun'. Once there the rogue knocked the captain out, found the documents, and scaled down the window. When I reunited with the party I had only one question for them. "Why didn't we just climb up to the window?"

Well, not really a 'costume' per se, but my minotaur barbarian once infiltrated a hobgoblin war camp by asking who he had to hit to get a job. I think I posted the details here a while back, but here goes:
Bunch of hobbos are attacking local elf villages, burning them to the ground. Worse, they have captured an elven Baron. The adventurers and about a hundred elf archers go forth to put a stop to this nonsense. They find that the hobbos are *substantially* more prepared than they thought, and have a fortified warcamp, five hundred warriors, and several carts with flammable oil for burning wooden elf towns.
There is considerable debate as to how to enter, when Bort (my minotaur barbarian) gets an idea. He walks boldly up to the gates, and shouts up to the hobbo on watch:
"Ey! You dere!"
"Oi! Whatchoo want?"
"Who I hit for job?"
"WHAT?!" (at this point, players and DM both are equally shocked)
"Want job. You gots lots for fighting. Who I hit for job?"
"Ummm... *whispered conferring with other guard* ...hang on, I'mma let you in."
"Ok." *gate opens* "I hit you for job now?"
"Nonono.. go talk to chief! He give you job!"
So Bort saunters through the warcamp, taking note of where things are, heading straight for the biggest tent with the most skulls on it, and ducks inside.
"Ey! You can't come in here! This.. whoa. You big."
"You the one I fight for job?" (points at chief)
"WHAT?!" (again, shock from all concerned)
"I tell 'ob at gate I want job. He say go to chief. I fight you, I get job, yes?"
"Um... Fight *him*." (points at a bugbear)
Fight ensues, and the minotaur barbarian is soon a new lieutenant in the hobbo army. He tours around the camp, gives a few well-placed kicks, generally getting to know the place... when suddenly calamity! A fire has broken out in the weapon storage tent! Of course, this may have something to do with the pixie pyromancer that the minotaur has in his belt pouch... Wow, those oil barrels go up REAL good, don't they?
Of course, Bort swings into action, organizing the troops, sends them off to go get water from the river. So about a hundred hobbos, armed only with buckets, run into a hundred elves armed with bows. Hilarity ensues.
By this time, the entire camp is ablaze, hobbos are screaming and burning as oil barrels explode everywhere. The minotaur sticks his head into the chief's tent, "Whole camp on fire! We gotta leave!" He looks at the captive, "Him important? I'll carry him."
And so, the hobbos flee out of the burning warcamp, into the arrows of the elves, while Bort strides majestically out of the blazing inferno, carrying the captive, not looking back as more oil barrels explode behind him.

It was a play-by-post RP game, but once, for a Halloween event, I had my character (a slightly delusional teenage girl with illusion powers who believed she was telekinetic) dress up as a magical girl, frills, fake gems, and all, to enter a corn maze.

Said corn maze involved, at one point, entering and moving through a sewer.

She ended up going in there twice.

The costume was ruined by the end of the night, because she's a teenager and she can't afford to actually buy a good costume.

Way back in the early days of my gaming career, I ran a pathfinder campaign that had the PCs fighting time-traveling Nazis from the future WWII era. It was a one-off, so I figured that there wouldn't be too many issues. Well, that didn't last long. As the PCs were infiltrating the island where the Nazis' secret base was, one of the party members disguised himself as Hitler and bluffed the guards into letting them onto the island. I thought it was funny, so I let him keep up the charade, and he managed to do it again to get through the main gate and smuggle the party in as well. At that point though I firgured enough was enough, so I decided to have the real hitler accidentally bump into him in the hall, along with his elite guards. I figured the PCs would realize the jig was up and run, kind of like I had planned, but the fake-hitler party member kept up the act and tried to convince the elite guards and hitler himself that he was the real Fuhrer.

He actually succeeded.

Naturally, I was shocked, so I just kind of let it go to see what happened. He had hitler kill himself for impersonating the 'real' hitler, and then proceeded to bring WWII to a peaceful end and rebuild the world into a prosperous and hospitable paradise. Then, when he was done, he and the party traveled back to their own time and lived quiet lives for the rest of their days.

Dark heresy game, the inquisitor we were persuing and finally murdered, we were able to take over her codes, knowledge and credentials. My psyker was twice able to disguise as an inquisitor first to gain access to an imperial city, sabotage it from the inside and let an ork WAAAGH!! roll right in.

Next up we used it to get inside an imperial base and got alone with the commander and his best commissars. With our flesh shaper we were able to knock them all out (the commander was already in a coma due to a tau sniper) and got to work, when they came to the seven of them were trapped in a single monstrous body that went on a rampage, with them having no say in the matter while we watched aboard our ship. Many of us enjoyed lovely new mutations as a result, while the flesh shaper got all giddy and turned my psyker into a machine.

I have actually had the idea to make a Changeling character that changes his/her appearance every day (and always introduces him/herself with a different name every time) The excuse for the character is that s/he is trying to find his/her "true self."

Otherwise, the closest I have is a Savage Worlds game in the RunePunk setting:

My party was a group of not-quite-mercenaries (I forget the slang of RunePunk for it) known as "Black Smoke" (Because every member smoked cigarettes). Anyways, we had been tasked by someone to retrieve a man who had reneged on his debt (or something like that) and we tracked him down to the Vault of Sabine, home of one of the Talus (essentially nine powerful demon lords).

Sabine said that she would give him over to us if we retrieved for her the head of some other guy who had slighted her in some fashion, which we agreed to do.

After tracking the guy down, we approached him with the excuse of telling him some information that he had to hear, but we would only tell in private (we also brought along a hooker, because of what he was like). After we retreated into the bathhouse with the guy, who left his bodyguards outside the door, he asked what the information was.

"Us." And our swordsman chopped off his head in one swing. We left him there, with paying the hooker to pretend they were doing stuff and leave later as if he were just tired and wanted to be left alone for a while. The bodyguards never suspected a thing.

In my old gaming group in high school, there was a player who was kind of a jerk. I could tell stories about how he attempted to turn my shortlived 4e campaign into softcore porn, but that's a story for "Story Time About Players Who Nearly Kill Another Player IRL Because Of Disputes With The GM."

In a different campaign, this player was using a homebrew race called "Demi-Human" which was created after the core races made peace with the demons because devils took over the world.

Part of the flavor for a Demi Human was that they looked human, but had to have some small feature that outed them. It could be a tail or horns or anything like that. The player opted for giant wings like he was a character from Gargoyles.

Actual conversation between the player and the GM: "You need to take some identifying feature though." "I want giant bat wings on my back." "...You do realize that this is all purely flavor and you won't be able to fly, right?" "I don't care, i want them."

Cut to a session and a half later when we've finally left the prologue and are heading into the demon territory. We reach the first town before the demi-human realizes. "...I've got giant bat wings that'll out me in an instant."

He hid outside, while the rest of the PC's explored the town. Some of the PC's with "lower morals" (as I was playing a LG Cleric whose background gave him strong racial hatred against demons) eventually decided to get the demi-human a big enough cloak to hide the wings.

Sort of Costume moment, After 2 party members got married, we all ended up with the outfits afterwards. Needless to say the rest of the adventure had the Fighter in a Wedding gown, the Cleric in a tux, and the rest of the 25 man party in Bridesmaid and best men outfits. Man the dark wizard was confused.

So, this was in the old Living Arcanis convention campaign setting. Our party's face was also the cleric of Sarish, the god of devils, blood and secrets. We're in an area ruled by the most zealous sect of Nier, the god of war, fire and destruction, who are on a jihad-like campaign to purge all infidels. For the mission, we've been given potions of Alter Self that make us appear a Nierite squad.

We stumble upon a patrol of Nierite zealots battling a demonic scouting party. We intercede, at range, ensuring the patrol's survival. During the fight, the Sarishan subtly used his power over demons to banish several of them.

Cut to the post-battle conversation.

ZEALOT: Thank you for your intercession!
SARISHAN PC: It was our honor. I'm just glad I was able to command them to depart this plane.
ZEALOT: *Eyes narrow* You... commanded them?
SARISHAN PC: *Drop-beat* Oh... hell with it. Kill them all!

After the party killed the Nierites, we never, ever let the face forget that little faux pas.

I'm not really a gamer, but about four years ago I was invited to a friend's 21st, a costume party with an M-theme (his name being Michael). Since I'd recently played Sam and Max: Beyond Time and Space, I tried to get together a mariachi costume, with the intention of announcing myself with the words "Did someone say... birthday?!". In hindsight, there were at least three fairly predictable reasons why no one made the intended connection.

One year in college a Quail Man costume I threw together was actually more clever than I thought it was. Most of the parents and other students got it. The kids, on the other hand, thought I was Captain Underpants.

That is a pretty cool costume. Getting a bonus character out of it isn't too shabby, really.

I know Twilight's pain up there, because I once went out disguised as Lieutenant Rozanov from The Russians Are Coming at one Hallowe'en dance. Naturally, nobody knew who I was supposed to be in the forge cap with my father's leather jacket from his high school days, my hair dyed black, and a black grease mustache. Some thought I was a bad attempt at Freddie Mercury. Others thought it was a really bad gay pride costume.

Now there's a movie I occasionally mine for references no one gets. Too bad, really. It's got a certain charm, not to mention Alan Arkin, Brian Keith, Carl Reiner, and Jonathan Winters.

I once dressed up in the best I could manage for a One Piece costume. I was only eight at the time I think, but we'd seen Zoro's backstory, or at least part of it, so I'd written a few shredded linen wraps,a vest, and dyed my hair green, plus got three bokken to complete it, and... No one knew who I was, but everyone thought all the Naruto costumes were super awesome and original, while mine was weird.

Then again, our gym teacher had dressed up like Buggy, and the lunch guy had dressed up as Sanji (4Kids version, including lollipop), so not everyone was Naruto related. Our principal had dressed up like Frankenstein's Monster's Wife, while my teacher had dressed as Warrior Princess Xena. Mmmm... 'Twas a good year, that one. Though the eye candy was more bountiful than the sugary kind.

Well, in my Story ist more a case of ATTEMPTED Costume/Disguise, also in a pathfinder game.

See our Group was rather well known (happens if you bear the titles of Knights of Chaos, and Dress up in identical Capes made out of Nightmare Hide, that billow blackish-red SMoke, and consist of a Large Greatsword wielding Psychic Warrior, a winged golden skinned Outsider Warlock, a copper-Halfdragon Barbarian and a fricking huge Chaotically warped Tree Cleric).
Well our Quest demanded from us that we not be recocnized ahead of making our move, so we all tried to persuade the PsyWarrior to split with his sword and masquarade as a "regular off the mill Fighter" for a while.
Sadly he has Spell Reisistance 23, the CLeric failed his Spells, my (+38 Bonus!!) Intimidate Roll came up 1 and then the Half Dragon unintentionally knocked him out in their ... discussion.

So no Info beforehand, we had to go in without any clues...and the DM stopped the session there. Grrr....

I have never been a costumer, but I do enjoy the occasional prop. I have a felt aviation hat I wear with a pair of goggles when the NPC I'm running is a gnome.

When the NPC I'm running is a tiefling, I wear the hat with the goggle flipped up to the top of my head.

When the NPC is a halfling, I just take the goggles off.

Barmaid: remove hat and wear goggles around my neck.

Still, my favourite prop was one another DM used this week. The player to the left of him spent most of the session with light purple yarn looped around him to indicate that his character had been captured. To indicate he was being tortured for information, the DM also brought licorice whips.

Yeah, I love my goggles on days when its dusty, hailing, raining heavily, or snowing heavily in windy conditions.

I apparently have one good costume. When I went to see Rainbow Rocks, staff and customers thought I was a manager in to supervise the show. Well, if it put people on best behaviour, good. If it wasn't necessary to keep the audience well behaved, even better. All I'd done is worn slacks and a dress shirt that day. Fashions change, I guess?

Ooh, I know that pain. I went to Emerald City Comic Con this year as the Doctor... the eighteenth Doctor. Suffice to say, when you go to a con dressed as a future (and thus unknown) incarnation of a character, nobody asks to take photos of you.

I had the same issue with my tactician costume from Fire Emblem Awakening over at SLC Fantasy Con (Being a character whose appearance is customizable doesn't help with the recognition factor). That changed a little when I went to SLC Comic Con a few months later as some people recognized me but I can't really figure out what happened between those two events to produce such a change. Oh well...

In a Pathfinder game I'm in based around subterfuge and skullduggery, I, the party rogue at the time, was a master of disguise. The rest of the part, not so much.

The issue came to a head when our opposition, the herald of the god of destruction, blew up an entire city and pinned the blame on us. So we had to go through every city in disguise.

I was perfectly fine, and our hunter was passable, but the magus's rolls were so bad, it was said that his idea of a disguise was switching his sword from one side of his hips to the other. The cleric didn't even bother.

It got even more hilarious when the hunter and cleric walked into the bounty hunter's outpost to check on our bounties. The clerk immediately sees our non-disguised cleric and sets the royal guards on us.

Luckily, the king wanted us alive to destroy another city in his rival's kingdom, so at least we got away from that alive.

Oddly enough, one year my younger brother re-used a Boba Fett costume I'd worn a previous year (home-made by our mom). The strange thing is that people took notice of the costume, but somehow they mistook him as wearing a costume of John Glenn!

On the one hand, it was the same year that John Glenn had gone back up into space as an old guy, but it still boggles my mind that people were mistaking Boba "Star Wars Bounty Hunter" Fett for John "NASA space astronaut" Glenn.

Okay guys, I have a story for this one. I'm going to try and keep it short - at least, as far as my stories are concerned - but here goes...

Okay, so I'm playing in a Dark Heresy Campaign as a... War Priest I believe it was... and we're doing this James Bond-esque espionage/info gathering mission. The whole party got fake identities as a visiting noblemen and his entourage (and since I had all the people skills, naturally I was the noble), and our job was to root out a cult that we feared had infiltrated this Imperial Hive City's government at the highest levels.

-Needless to say, we were trying to keep a low profile and blend in with the upper-crust.

Now, because of all this, one particularly interesting issue arose at one point. You see, we found this bounty hunter contact that had info on the cult. We set up a meeting with him, and everything was looking good. The only problem was that this bounty hunter insisted on meeting us in the most run-down, sleazy sector of the city (basically the basement level), and we knew that if I (being disguised as a noble) was seen in the undercity, we could just as well kiss our discrepancy goodbye. There would be scandal all over the news, and none of the cool cult kids would invite me to their fancy parties.

That just couldn't do - but hell if I was just going to stay at the mansion and sit this meeting out.

So, we came up with a plan. I would disguise myself as a lame, retarded, cripple following in the rest of the party's wake. I wore a robe and mask to hide my "hideous face," and pretended to limp and hunch over as I walked, making my best effort to basically disguise my... disguise... the noble disguise, that is...

Interestingly enough however, one of the other nobles' toadies ran into us while we were down in the undercity. The guy had his suspicions about my true identity too, and after we met with our bounty hunter contact (at a bar no less), the toady sicked some local thugs at us. He'd paid them off to beat me up, remove my mask, and show the world who I really was.

Well, I was suffering a penalty to my attacks with my disguise on, and I couldn't take it off in the middle of a barroom. I was forced to have to fight with my disguise on, and it got pretty tense.

-Until I remembered that I was wearing my flak armor, that is.

Basically, I had so much damage reduction with this armor on (against primitive weapons... like fists...) that these guys might as well have been punching a brick wall for all the good it did them.

Meanwhile, I was rolling crits with my return swings, punching these guys with uppercuts and haymakers all day long.

When the thugs realized they were losing, they tried to give up attacking and simply tear off my mask, but I was slapping their hands away and decking 'em again and again. I KO'd two of the three thugs that came after us, all with my bare hands (and I had absolutely no specialization in unarmed combat)!

By the time it was all over, the whole bar was cheering, "CRIP! CRIP! CRIP!" and I was limping around in circles, still hunched over as I pumped my fists in the air.

-Oh, and the toady?

When he saw what I'd done to his thugs, he ran out of that bar like a bat out of Hell.

The last pathfinder campaign of mine group involved a war/uprising of Elfs that used a demon incursion as a pretense to conqueror the cities.
Mine group was orded to infiltrated and open to gate for the army, so that they could reconquer the city from the elfs. We used a secret tunnel to get into the city, but then we fond out that there was a curfew at night. Me (the ranger) and our Ninja/Assassin managed to slip by the guards with ease, leaving our Cleric, Magus and Wizard to make there way trough the city.

Luckily our Cleric was a Elf and devised a plan. he was orded to deliver the prisoners (our Magus and Wizard) to the gate for some target practice. His first roll went well, second one, well........ let just say that our Wizard decided that he was a old man and yea...... stuff happened. It kept the guards away and the rest of the patrols to. We never looked at our Wizard the same way afterwards.

I'm going to assume that your cleric was the one trying to disguise your other party members as prisoners and your second roll didn't get as high as you would of liked. I'm always glad when a plan works despite a bad roll, especially since I'm plagued with them.

But I'm with Zuche, a little more details on how you managed to get pass the guards and patrols would be nice. Or at least a description of how the wizard usually looked so we can understand why him being an old man would be odd.

Oke then.
First I wasn't the party Cleric, Now about our Wizard.
He was a bit of crazy old fire obsessed Wizard. So when the role of our Cleric was a bit low, he decided to do the following thing.
Asking our GM, "Could I have stepped in some shit while walking? "Our GM "Eeeeeehhh Oke?" The Wizard "Oke, I crap my self for added effect."
*silence*
"And then I am going to act like a senile old man."
Our first reaction was something like this. "WHAT?" Before half broke down laughing, other part sat there stunned.
Our GM was stunned and just went along with.

Quick story about my Halloween episodes. We play our Pathfinder campaign as TV Show - we have seasons, premieres and finales, limited number of sessions per season, trailers etc. Recently I came up with holiday episodes - where we live we don't celebrate Halloween, but it was easiest place to start. I come up with All Gods Eve - a night in which highest servants and even avatars of all deities come to material plane to visit mortals. Or at least so says the tradition. All of the people including the players can dress up as any god's servant (even dark and forbidden ones) without fear of any punishment. So the players jumped to occasion during party in giant Inn where they were staying. They mostly dressed up as servants of their own patrons, plus 15+ other npc with their own costumes. Suddenly the lights shut off, people start wondering the corridors of giant building. And soon enough, the servant of one particular vicious deity came with divine retribution for mortals. It was the first time that I managed to scare a team in D&D/Pathfinder. They didn't want to attack deity servant(they were level 7) and it didn't attack everybody at once. It turned into giant cat and mouse game with looking for clues. And that's how I managed to turn Halloween episode into Scooby Doo episode with 5th level illusionist conman. After taking off "mask" everybody was ready to kick ass. But before that it was running between corridors, Benny Hill style. Next thing on my list, Christmas Carol episode.

... I' not awake in even the slightest right now (Just back from 10 hours of school. Game days are awesome), so my mind is kind of off right now. I can't tell if we will run into our pirate-y friend again (probably though). This came out a little while ago, and I thought, "Why not?"

I remember that we all had to roll disguise because we were currently wanted in the region.
I won't bore you with what everyone did but I rolled a Nat 20.
Me: I draw a mustache on myself"
I was the only one who didn't get captured.

I don't have a costume story, per se, but I have a story in which my PC had to pretend she was something she wasn't.

So, I was playing Wanderer's codex (my friend's homemade RPG), as a vampire warlock named Solyxia, with my companion being a human knight, and we had to infiltrate a dwarven academy to find proof that one of the professors was doing illegal corpse trading with the outside world. However, I wasn't allowed in the academy at night, due to reasons of being a vampire and scaring the students, so i stayed outside.

After a long series a of events, I helped my companion break into the library, steal a rare book, then I got framed for being a thief. In order to keep from both of us being found out, I went along with it. We ended up having a duel a fake duel in front of the academy, in front of a small army of guards led by a friendly cleric who had no idea what was happening.
Solyxia eventually wins the "duel" summons an exploding hell raven as a distraction, then vaults over the double line of guards armed with pikes and flees into the tunnels. The dwarves never suspected a thing, and Solyxia was not happy about being portrayed as the villain without her consent.

Let's see, disguise story... I have a pretty funny one from a Pony-tales Campaign I joined a few years back. My character was a Pegasus named Candy Cloud, sergeant in the royal guard. We had just gotten through our first dungeon and set up camp when we spotted a strange pony spying on us. When he noticed we saw him, he tried to run. Me, being the most athletic, chased him down and 'accidentally' knocked him out when he drew a sword.

It turned out he was a member of something called the 'Solar Inquisition,' that worlds version of the Spanish Inquisition. Being a guard, my character realized this and hastily donned the amulet that identified their order.

Two other members of the Inquisition arrived looking for their comrade, and, seeing me thought I was a member. They asked me if I'd seen their fallen friend (It turned out they had a magic alarm that let them know if one was attacked.)

I managed to keep them tricked until they found his unconscious body, at which point I managed to knock them out before combat even started.

dunno if it counts as a costume or not but definitely different then 'normal attire'

Seems the DM is a fan of ToTQ and had set up a solo campaign based partly on of the storylines.

My Ranger was sent to retrieve a magical artifact and transport to a group of mages for safekeeping and examination.
I get robbed while trying to rent a horse.

To try and retrieve the artifact, I find a nice, seedy tavern and inquire about the local thieves guild.
Oopsie, turns out the guild fractured and there are now 3 different groups in the city- and they all at semi-open war with each other. And I had just asked about one- in outer lair of one of the others. Massive fight ensues, Im forced to flee, and lose some of my gear along the way. Double oopsie, wrong turn into a dead end. I manage to get away again, by using a smokebomb and climbing up to the roves, but not before losing part of my armor- and my shirt.
Chase resumes and finally culmistes with my forced to shirk off the rest of my armor to wiggle through a hole in the wall and get away.
and then I botch the last roll. I snag my trousers on.. something and they tear off. Leaving my charter with nothing but his swords, half a backpack.. and his birthday suit.
... Not a problem, I'll just find some clothes to... borrow or something. I duck into the first house.. which I fail to notice is more of a manor. I blunder my way though the house, finally losing my patience and picking a nice big curtain to use to cover myself. Yank down part of the curtain and...
large crowd of merchants, lower nobility and other high society buffs all staring at me.

*&^%$&!@#$

I spend the next 20 mintues running from the guard while trying to ... cover myself.

No dice, I wind up in the slammer.
"Fleeing from the guard, theft, public indecency..."

it wasn't till one of the guars make a joke about me pulling the 'same thing as the raccoon kid' that I got the joke.